Down, Up and over: Slave Religion and Black Theology (New Vectors in the Study of Religion and Theology)

Rating:
Summary: What a slog.
Review: With respect to content, Down, Up and Over reads like rehashed pc rhetoric and received Marxist criticism. But my problem is with the execution of the book, which makes for a study of bad academic writing. To begin with, Hopkins is very repetitive. There seems to be a general arc of thematic development, but his thesis and supporting argument could be done in a third as many pages. The prose is often awkward and utterly lacking in economy, as if it were contrived to seem "intelligent" and say more than it really does. Two cases in point:

"And their bodies and minds are racked
internally by psychological demons created by larger macrostructures circumscribing attempts to live a daily micro-existence of full spiritual and material humanity."

"Inspiring words can be with the oppressed and work with them to reconfigure their inner and outer selves, whether this be an actual transformation of an external architecture of systemic oppression or an alteration of a stultifying internal edifice of psychological enslavement." (209)

A marginally better writer could say the same thing in 15 words or less, and with more precision.